


And Then

by thuvia ptarth (thuviaptarth)



Category: Das Wachsfigurenkabinett | Waxworks (1924)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 05:32:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/606338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thuviaptarth/pseuds/thuvia%20ptarth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The stories told by the museum owner's daughter are not quite the same as the stories told by the poet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Then

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Assimbya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Assimbya/gifts).



How blue is the sky, so blue, bright as a penny and twice as hard; it’s a wonder birds don’t bang into it like a closed window and fall down dazed. How hard is the sky, so hard, hard as iron and rounded like an onion dome, like an overturned goblet, like the curved bars of a birdcage. There is no escaping into this sky. It just marks out the boundaries of your cell.

But what a luxurious cell, so full of wonders! Here, a toy carousel you can wind up so the horses go up and down, round and round, as the music plays. Here, swathes of fabric strewn over a dressing table, shiny satins and velvets rubbed raw, an old purple cloak sewn with glass gems, a cross-embroidered stole that flashes like a mirror when you turn your head right. A mess of treasure is scattered across the dressing table: bright broad rings for every fingers, ropes of false pearls spilling to the floor, glass snow globes that show no falling snow and battered hourglasses that lie on their sides telling sad stories of the death of time. 

_Once upon a time,_ your book says.

 _And then,_ you write.

  


~o~

  


After the sultan returns to his palace, what then? Then he teaches Zarah the baker’s wife to play chess. Zarah is an impatient player: she sighs and fidgets and scratches and stretches. Her dress bunches up at her waist, slips down one shoulder, it flares too loose and binds too tight. Surely she would be more comfortable if she took it off. 

She toys with the jeweled chess pieces; she bites her plump red lips. The sultan takes her hand and folds back her fingers to reveal the king: the tsar, the sultan tells her; his chess set is from a far land so the pieces have strange names. Tsar, tsarina, serf. The sultan does not let go of her hand. He strokes a slow finger down the smooth curve of the tsar's robes, his fingernail barely nicking her palm at the end, and she shivers and leans closer.

"In chess," the sultan says, "the king is valuable, but almost powerless. It is the queen who has all the power."

"A world of opposites." Zarah glances up at him from under her lashes, smiling.

"But even in this world I am a slave to your beauty, my turtledove."

"Oh, no, my lord," she protests.

"Oh, yes, my sweet," he replies.

  


  


In the corner the musicians play. A tall cadaverous man beats the time with slow claps.

  


Haroun al-Raschid, the wisest of all rulers and the greatest of all kings, knows the secret to happiness, and it is no secret at all: it is to satisfy every desire. Playfully he loops one of his ropes of pearls over Zarah's head; she giggles; he reels her in for a kiss. His clever hands undo her strangling garments, free her bound hair. Unclad, Zarah the baker's wife is as soft and brown and fragrant as fresh-baked bread, and Haroun al-Raschid gobbles her right up. 

A man of wide-ranging appetites, Haroun al-Raschid does not stop with Zarah. Later that night, Assad the baker comes to the sultan's bedchamber a second time, the first time by invitation. The sultan is generous with his plenty, and Assad is duly grateful; Zarah watches with drowsy approving eyes. How prettily her husband flushes, and not only on the cheeks. How lovely the strain in his spread thighs, the panting of his open mouth. 

It is the happiest ending she can imagine, the baker's young wife, the baker's bored wife, luxury a better bun in the oven than mere grain. How she longs for such pleasures during all the long days! She has so many longings and dreams, beautiful Zarah, discontented Zarah, the neglected wife of handsome Assad, hard-working Assad. Assad who rises before dawn and goes to bed after nightfall, Assad who counts pennies with a frown, who measures all his ingredients twice. Assad who spends all his youth and all his beauty on exertion and worry, who wastes the strength of his hands on the kneading of dough. Her body yearns for those hands, but no matter how she pampers him, no matter how she smiles, now matter how she flirts with the rich merchants among his customers, nothing awakens his jealousy or his interest. Dissatisfaction settles into her bones. She feels less pretty by the day. She's no luscious pastry; she's a cold lump of dough.

Pale loaves wait on a wooden tray, ready for baking; their consummation will come sooner than hers. Time passes, bread bakes, love curdles like milk. Sighing, she scratched an hourglass in the soft dough with her fingernail. An hourglass or infinity, time or timelessness, what passes too soon or never passes at all.

  


~o~

  


In Russian fairy tales, every man is named Ivan: cruel tsars, handsome princes, kind-hearted fools. Vasilisa is surrounded by Ivans: Ivan her betrothed, Ivan her father, Ivan the tsar, Ivan the alchemist whom she never meets. She dances with Ivan her new betrothed, who directs her steps too strictly; she dances with Ivan the tsar, who grips her hands too tight. "Let's run," she whispers to her bridgegroom. Fear is an arrow to the heart: she's bleeding to death. "Be sensible," Ivan tells her; "Do not weep," Ivan tells her; "Do what I command," Ivan tells her. 

  


  


A fat man with sad eyes plays a dirge at her wedding feast. His face is kind, but his name is Ivan, too.

  


  


The tsar stalks her, strikes her with his heavy paw. He lets her run, but in this place every passageway is dark and every staircase leads down. Every human voice sounds like it's crying in pain, but that's because most of them are. Ivan hangs from the ceiling like a butchered carcass, his pale shoulders striped with red. Ivan grips her shoulders from behind, trapping her against the bars of the cell.

She has heard the stories, and she knows his weakness. Fear is poison in the veins: she pours his cup. _Ivan_ , she writes on his hourglass, and he turns the hourglass over and over, his fate perpetually postponed. 

She feels just as trapped as a madman, as she sits by her window, telling herself stories of tragedy and terror and watching the snow. Somewhere far away from here, Ivan speaks to Ivan, deciding her fate. Her father gives her to a handsome bridegroom with gentle hands. Her father trades her to a mad king for power. Her father seals her in a glass bubble she cannot escape. 

_Ivan,_ she writes in the frost in the window; _Ivan,_ she embroiders on her trousseau; _Ivan,_ she traces on her palm, in the bright still hours of winter's sunlit nights. _Ivan._ In English it would be John. _Every man Jack._

  


~o~

  


Lulu loves carnivals, but she hates funhouses. The only reflections she trusts are those in her lovers' eyes, and even those have the habit of turning on her. But Alwa insists. "I'll protect you," he promises, and of course she listens and of course in the mottled shadows and distorted reflections they lose each other.

"Alwa?" Lulu calls, but only echoes answer. From the left, her reflection sneers at her; from the right, her reflection threatens. Her reflection lounges on a couch, naked but for a shining ring on her finger and strands of pearl over her breasts. Her reflection clutches her hands, covered from head to toe in shimmering white. Her reflection lifts papers from a desk, and something looms behind her — a man. A statue. Her reflection is wearing her clothes, but her eyes are so dark, her eyes cannot be that dark. Something looms behind her — a statue. A man.

“Alwa?” she says, half-turning, and his huge hands grasp her shoulders and turn her back to the mirror. She meets Spring-Heeled Jack's reflected eyes. 

“Little girl,” he says, “do you know who I am?”

His hands are so strong. She could not break free of them if she tried. “I know,” she says.

  


  


The music of the calliope plays so loud.

  


  


Alwa hurtles into Jack as he raises the knife. "Run," he shouts, struggling, but she will not abandon him. The knife slashes the shadows with reflected light. She grabs for it and wetness spills over her fingers: she thinks she must be in pain, to feel the blood and no shock.

Ink bleeds on her fingers and Lulu wipes them off on the blotter with a sigh. This was supposed to be the fair copy for the printer, done in good time for the deadline for once; now she'll have to re-do it.

  


~o~

  


How dark the sky is, so dark; how bright the carnival lights, how loud the music! You could disappear into such a sky; you could vanish under such music. 

You hear your husband's footsteps before he draws back the curtain that divides your sleeping quarters from the museum workshop. Behind him you can see the comforting bulks of the wax figures. The museum visitors always flinch from them, but you grew up with the waxworks and their faces are as familiar to you as your own father's.

Your husband bends down to kiss your forehead. "Still warm," he murmurs. You grumble. You are tired of being sick inside a little room.

"I've been in bed forever," you complain.

"You've been in bed two days."

"You're laughing at me."

"Maybe a little," he says, sitting on the edge of the bed and picking up your hands. Your fingertips are blue with spilled ink. "What have you been writing?"

You press blotchy fingerprints onto his hands: an evidence trail. An ownership claim. 

“Let me tell you,” you say, and you put your arms around his neck and pull him down.


End file.
